Itil News And Review

Thursday, June 27, 2013

The
ITIL certification scheme enables an individual to gain credits for
ITIL® courses. There are four levels within the scheme: Foundation,
Intermediate, Expert and Master. The Foundation level
is the entry level qualification which offers candidates a general
awareness of the key elements, concepts and terminology used in the
ITIL® Service Lifecycle, including the linkages between Lifecycle
stages, the processes used and their contribution to Service Management
practices.

In ITIL Intermediate level,
has a modular structure with each module holding a different focus.
Candidates can take as few or as many Intermediate qualifications as
they require, and to suit their needs. The Intermediate modules go into
more detail than the Foundation level and is an industry-recognized
qualification.

The ITIL Expert level
of qualification is aimed at those individuals who are interested in
demonstrating a superior level of knowledge of the ITIL® Scheme in its
entirety. Achieving this level of ITIL® qualification will benefit a
candidate in both their personal and professional development, by aiding
career advancement and progression within the IT Service Management
field. Candidates who achieve ITIL® Expert level will also satisfy the
prerequisite entry criteria for the ITIL® Master Level; the highest
level qualification within the ITIL scheme.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

With service desks desperate for more time
to focus on challenges such as supporting user devices and delivering
mobile centric services, James West questions whether the vastly
expanding ITIL body of knowledge has made itself irrelevant and that
perhaps Lean now offers much clearer guidance for IT.

As part of its Lean qualification announcement,
APMG emphasises how Lean is designed to complement, rather than replace
popular IT frameworks such as ITIL. However, with reception to ITIL
2011 being at best lukewarm, is there a case for stating that Lean is
now a better fit for IT departments trying to meet the current (and
future) raft of challenges?

The idea may not be as outlandish as it first appears when viewed in
the context of IT and the modern business world. It is well documented
that IT, and the way that businesses and their staff use technology, is
changing at a faster rate than any time in history, with user devices,
social media, cloud and mobility being the most visible agents of
change.

No one can legitimately claim to have a perfect plan for dealing with
these issues, because they have helped create an inherently unstable
and undefined technology landscape. In the absence of a proven rule
book or template, the only logical certainty is that IT must now be more
ready to adapt than it has in the past.

Following this line of thinking, desirable traits IT needs to
demonstrate include speed, agility and clean simplicity, and these are
all areas that Lean purports to help deliver. In contrast, look at the
latest version of ITIL, which attempts to add clarity by massively
expanding an already daunting body of text. The point is that at a time
when IT desperately needs to unshackle itself from conventions and long
established working practices, when IT needs to be clearly defined and
uncluttered to stand a chance of remaining relevant, the response from
ITIL is to add more words.

Lean can’t possibly offer all the answers and it doesn’t offer the
core, logical ITSM processes that ensure ITIL is still a useful
reference tool. But while the underlining principles of Lean are in
step with what IT needs to become, ITIL appears to represent the over
complicated past that is one of the prime reasons why technology
departments are struggling to keep up with the pace of change.